Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Blue Heron eating something

Chris noticed this large blue heron make a graceful landing on the other side of the lake. A large blue heron was a common visitor last fall before we started blogging and Mike has been wanting to take his picture, even if it's from a distance. He took a few and then was surprised to find out that he caught it eating something rather large. At first we thought it might be a muskrat, which herons have been known to eat, but now we think it may be a large fish. Whatever it is, it looks too big for it.

Geese

The Canada Geese are by far the most numerous waterfowl on the lake. They can be a bit of a nuisance and are the reason that most people have fences on the lakefront.

Canada Goose

"Whitey," as we call her, is a white goose. We aren't sure what type of goose she is. At first, we thought she was a snow goose, but the snow goose has a much different shape to its beak. Whitey is more domesticated than the other geese and we speculate that she may have been a domestic goose that is now out in the wild. It's hard to call her wild. She seems to enjoy handouts more than the wild geese. She notices when the first light goes on in the morning and appears just in case we have something. She'll get up on the dock and attempt to join in a snack or a conversation. She'll get involved in our yard work.

Whitey

Some neighbors have told us that in the past she's laid eggs and had goslings. There don't appear to be any this year. We have seen her mating with the Canada geese. So that brings up the question as to why there are some geese with white heads but mostly Canada Goose markings. We've read that Canada Geese can interbreed with Snow Geese and produce goslings with similar markings. We don't know if these are Whitey's offspring.

Hybrid Goose?

Below is another goose with unusual markings (at least to us). The goose above is the same size as the Canada Goose. The one below is noticeably larger, but hangs out with Whitey often as well as the Canada Geese.

Hybrid Goose?

Whitey and the larger hybrid goose

All Together Now

We really don't know what is going on. If you do, leave a comment (by clicking on the word comments below as in "0 comments" or "1 comment").

Jersey Birding Links

Birds at the Bird feeders

About us

For those of you visiting this site who do not know us, we thought we would offer a brief explanation of how it all happened. We have lived in several different states, including Connecticut, New Hampshire, California, Virginia, and New Jersey. The house we rented sits right on a small lake, so we initially saw lots of geese and some mallards, rather mundane yet enjoyable. There seemed to also be an abundance of woodpeckers, and we started putting suet out for them. Mike frequently gets up early, and while working from his desk in the window this past fall, he noticed something other than geese on the lake. At first it started with a Pied-billed grebe, and then we also saw briefly a Wood Duck or two, a few Ring-necked ducks, Bufflhead, and then the gorgeous Hooded Mergansers. Well, we’ve fed birds before at other homes, but we’ve never lived on water, and we were especially fascinated by the beauty of the Hooded Mergansers. We have two grown daughters and family sprinkled around the US, and we were constantly e-mailing them pictures of the birds and ducks, so we decided it would just be easier to put them up on the web to share. We are not real die-hard birders, and we have no formal photography training. We’re just a couple who is enjoying the birds and waterfowl of their own backyard and wanted to share them. So, you may find more professional pictures somewhere else, but we hope you enjoy our site as well.

We moved back to California in June 2012, and we've started a new blog, California Birds. Here are our most recent California photos.